Timetable
20. The July 1998 consultation paper said that it
was unlikely that a unified service could be established in less
than three years, and that it could take up to five.[24]
In July 1999, the Government announced its intention to establish
a new National Probation Service, under the Home Office's responsibility,
and, at the same time, CAFCASS under the Lord Chancellor.[25]
In March 2000, the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill, providing
for the establishment of both new services, was published. The
Bill received Royal Assent on 30 November 2000.[26]
CAFCASS itself was launched on 1 April 2001. This was less than
three years after the publication of the consultation paper, and
less than two years after the announcement of the final decision
to create the new service.
21. The decision to launch CAFCASS on 1 April 2001
was principally determined by the Home Office's timetable for
establishment of the new National Probation Service on the same
date.[27]
The establishment of CAFCASS could not, the Department argued,
have been delayed without causing unacceptable disruption to the
Family Court Welfare Service.[28]
22. The Department's memorandum goes on to summarise
the resulting difficulties:
The period between CAFCASS's founding legislation
being in place (delayed by a longer than expected Parliamentary
process) and launch of the new Service in April 2001 proved, with
hindsight, to be too short a timespan for all the changes that
were needed. In particular, it did not allow a period of shadow
running for the Board and senior managers. This would have provided
an opportunity for those who would oversee the new Service to
become familiar with their new responsibilities and with the operating
structures that would make up CAFCASS; allowing greater planning
by those who would run the Service of the new processes and policies
it would need. It was always planned that the new Service would
be launched with a mandate to evolve, on the basis of operating
experience, to best deliver its functions. Nevertheless, the truncated
timetable and the view of the Inland Revenue, in the run up to
CAFCASS's launch, that the self-employed guardians' contracts
were unlikely to deliver self-employed tax status significantly
increased the challenges the new organisation faced on launch.[29]
Work of
the Project Team
23. The establishment of the Service was preceded
by preparatory work undertaken by an inter-departmental Project
Team in the Lord Chancellor's Department, with officials from
the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Welsh Office.
The Team's Project Director took up post in October 1999. The
Team oversaw the CAFCASS provisions of the Bill through their
Parliamentary progress. In parallel, they planned for the new
Service. They undertook all the detailed arrangements for implementation,
including transfer of all parts of the services which would become
CAFCASS into the new organisation from April 2001.[30]
24. The Department told us that preparation for the
new Service "relied on widespread involvement of staff and
stakeholders who would work with CAFCASS and its services."
The Project Team set up Advisory Groups and Task Teams to input
views as the Service was developed. Stakeholder groups were set
up to advise as development of CAFCASS's IT, staffing and estate
transfer were taken forward. These groups were, the Department
says, "instrumental in shaping the structure of the Service."
Stakeholders were also involved through a number of advisory groups,
which included representatives of, among others, the judiciary,
family law practitioners, and mothers' and fathers' representative
groups. The Project Team appeared at major conferences to publicise
and answer questions about CAFCASS. They attended over 100 local
meetings with members of the Family Court Welfare Service, the
guardians' profession, the judiciary and legal profession. Several
conferences across England and Wales were arranged by the Project
Team for staff considering transferring into the new Service.[31]
25. According to the Department, "Views put
forward were fed into the Project Team's work as far as possible,
but there were inevitably ideas that stretched beyond set up.
Some were aspirational and would take time to develop or deliver."
"It was envisaged," the Department continues, "[that]
the Service would take forward this development work once established."[32]
Effect
of the short timetable
26. As the Department admits, the short timetable
on which CAFCASS was set up proved to be a significant handicap
to its successful establishment as an organisation. This is of
course easy to say with the benefit of hindsight; more difficult
when the desire for change and development is prevalent and other
factors seem to militate in favour of minimal delay.[33]
Nonetheless the decision to proceed on that timetable
was a serious misjudgement. Furthermore, it is
difficult to argue that the problems only became apparent once
the organisation had been established, when the consultation paper
proposing its establishment recognised that three to five years
would be needed to put it on a proper footing. The Government
should not have allowed the timetable for the establishment of
the National Probation Service to dictate the unrealistic programme
for the establishment of CAFCASS. The decision to do so makes
CAFCASS appear of secondary importance. The impression was gained
that the Departmental priorities of the Lord Chancellor's Department
were secondary to those of the Home Office. It is vital that all
Government Ministers give priority to work with children in line
with their commitments under the UN Convention on the Rights of
the Child.
Appointment
of the Board and senior management team
27. The truncated timetable made it all the more
important that a shadow Board and senior management team be put
in place in good time for 'vesting day' on 1 April 2001. That
did not happen. The closing date for applications for the Chair
and members of the Board was 30 June 2000. Interviews for Board
members were held in September; the chair was appointed in December
2000; but the other successful candidates were not informed of
their appointment until a letter of 10 January 2001. The first
Board meeting did not take place until 13 February 2001.[34]
28. The Department had also failed to assemble a
full senior management team, and a number of posts were filled
on an interim basis or by consultants.[35]
A memorandum to this inquiry from the then Director of Operations
describes the situation at that time:
It is worth noting that the establishment of the
new National Probation Service, although hugely complex in itself,
was assisted and enabled by a more fully developed 'shadow' appointed
HQ Directorate staff pending the passage of the relevant legislation,
whereas the development of CAFCASS appears to have been left largely
to poorly managed consultants. For example, on taking up my post
my daily consultancy bill was approximately £4,500: information
and IT (c. £2,000); estates (c. £1,200); my predecessor,
retained by the CE (c. £800); communication (c. £500).
It was clear that these consultants (broadly speaking) were doing
their best, but in a management vacuum.[36]
Quite apart from the operational difficulties which
this situation would have caused, the daily expenditure of these
sums on consultants appears to us to be a questionable use of
scarce resources.
29. The advantages the presence of a full Board and
senior management team would have brought to the planning of the
new service are noted by the Department itself in the quotation
above.[37]
A properly functioning shadow Board could have alerted Ministers
to the serious problems being experienced in preparing for the
establishment of the Service, or done more to ensure a "firm
hand on the tiller" during that difficult period. Even if
a shadow Board had not been able to influence the timetable for
the establishment of CAFCASS, its timely formation would at least
have enabled its members to gain experience and understanding
of the work of the new organisation and the challenges facing
it before it formally started work.[38]
The importance of having a full senior management team in place
from the start when dealing with all the complications of bringing
together policies, practitioners and administrative and management
staff from so many different predecessor organisations should
have been self-evident. The Department asserts that delay to Royal
Assent of CAFCASS's founding legislation truncated the recruitment
timetable for senior posts and for planning for the transfer of
staff and contractors into the new Service.[39]
Contingency plans should, however, have been in place to deal
with such an eventuality. In particular, it is difficult to understand
why a shadow Board was not set up, with an indication that permanent
appointment was subject to the passage of the Bill.[40]
Funding
30. CAFCASS's original budget also turned out to
be inadequate. The year one running cost budget was just under
£72m, to which 'start up' capital money of some £9m
was added, making a total cash budget of just over £80.8m.
The Department records that "significant work" was done
by the Project Team to ensure the costing assumptions which produced
these figures were soundly-based;[41]
but continues,
It was always going to be difficult … to take
full account of the total costs including the hidden overheads
of support to the many small, locally-delivered services that
made up CAFCASS. This was in part because such information was
not routinely needed until CAFCASS was in prospect and then not
easily obtainable or estimated across numerous localised operations.[42]
31. Subsequent budget increases (CAFCASS's budget
for 2003-04 is £95m[43])
reveal the inadequacy of the original allocation. Despite the
Department's assertion that the Project Team undertook "detailed
scrutiny" of statistical returns for the Guardian service
and annual reports from a number of probation service areas,[44]
witnesses suggested to us that there was a failure properly to
assess the actual, rather than the budgeted, costs of the service.[45]
It has also been pointed out that there was an incentive for local
authorities and the Probation Service to underestimate their actual
spend on services which were to be transferred to CAFCASS, to
minimise the cuts to their own funding.[46]
That such factors should not have been taken into account when
calculating the initial budget allocation suggests failure on
the part of the Department to achieve sufficient resources to
ensure that the Service could properly fulfil its remit.[47]
Thus the deeply damaging impression was formed at an early stage
that cost-cutting was part of the agenda leading to the establishment
of the service: an impression which has persisted despite the
later injections of cash from the Department.
Establishment
of the service: conclusion
32. We deal in later paragraphs with the mistakes
and failures which occurred after vesting day. However,
the overall impression gained from consideration of the circumstances
leading up to the establishment of CAFCASS is that even prior
to its establishment there was a lack of high-level effectiveness
to ensure that the new service was a success. The
Minister has acknowledged that there were lessons to be learnt
for the Department from the establishment of CAFCASS.[48]
Nevertheless, the mistakes and misjudgements made at
that time left a legacy which made the already difficult task
of creating a successful new organisation even more difficult,
and contributed significantly to some of the problems which are
still being experienced.[49]
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